54 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



and it was not till 17 17 that this value was fixed by law. Gold, in 

 time, took its valuation from the quantity of silver it would purchase, 

 and in due course of time the position was reversed, and gold be- 

 came the standard by which everything was measured. The pound 

 sterling of to-day is composed of 22 parts of pure gold to two of 

 alloy, and the gold constituting it is fixed by law at ;£2^ 17s. io|d. 

 per oz. of gold bullion. The pound sterling now, although repre- 

 sented by a gold coin, is a mere figure of speech, representing what 

 was originally an actual tangible thing. The first record of gold 

 coin struck in England after the Roman sway, and that of the early 

 British, occurs in 1257. 



Thousands of ancient coins have been tested, and the result has 

 been to show that a ratio between gold and silver was fixed from 

 the earliest times with the most exact accuracy^ and Dr. Bruysch 

 shows that for international trade and tribute, the old Babylonian 

 standard was maintained for a very long time, and the great politi- 

 cal and commercial nations of the old world solved thereby the 

 bi-metallic problem, and maintained for centuries a fixed standard 

 between gold and silver. This standard, though influenced no 

 doubt by the relative quantity of the two metals, by the cost of pro- 

 duction, and by the demand for either gold or silver in the markets 

 of that day, was kept up as a safeguard for the interests of the traders 

 of that time. Modern financiers tell us that a change in the ratio 

 between gold and silver cannot be entirely prevented, but it took 

 place by very small degrees in early days. From the i6th century 

 before Christ, or if we take only coined money, from the 7th cen- 

 tury, B. C, to nearly to-day, the appreciation of gold has been no 

 more than i^, viz: from 13^ to 15, and any further disturbance, 

 such as not long ago threatened, or partly took place, may be due 

 to the resolution of certain governments to boycott for their own 

 purposes the second most precious metal in the world. The term 

 appreciation of gold is the purchasing power of money, taking it as 

 the measure value of commodities, and itself measured by them. 

 The depreciati'on of prices, and the appreciation of gold as the stand- 

 ard of value, thus mean the same thing. But I am digressing, and 

 this point of bi-metallism belongs to the sphere of political economy 

 more than to our subject. 



Gold, however, at last, came in a certain sense to be laid aside 

 by the introdution of paper money, necessitated by the extension of 



